This paper explores how contemporary Indigenous American novels use material metaphors to express cultural resilience, memory, and identity. Drawing on Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman, Brandon Hobson's The Removed, and Kelli Jo Ford's Crooked Hallelujah, the analysis investigates how authors employ the imagery of forging, alloying, braiding, and other material transformations as symbolic reflections of Indigenous endurance under colonial and postcolonial pressures. These literary works engage in acts of cultural engineering, creating narrative alloys from generational trauma, communal traditions, and decolonial hope. Just as materials undergo stress and transformation to emerge stronger, Indigenous characters in these novels endure historical trauma to reclaim identity and agency. By aligning Indigenous storytelling with metaphors rooted in metallurgical and material processes, this paper offers an interdisciplinary approach that bridges literature and material science, suggesting that stories are engineered forms of cultural survival.
This article investigates the commissioning process and the functionality of a flagship narco-drama original on Netflix, Narcos (2015-2021). The analysis draws upon the textual features of the show, the wider social context, and interviews with creators and executives. The paper argues that the show deviates from established notions about America's drug war and provides thematic meanings that condemn the interventionist policies that target the supply chain abroad. The results suggest that wider sociocultural developments that are shaping perspectives about existing drug policies, coupled with Netflix's transnational institutional aims, inform the commissioning procedures and the employment of a show that condemns America's war on drugs initiatives abroad. The examination foregrounds that these meanings are presented to supplement the streamer's offerings and build value proposition around its libraries, distinguishing the utilization of individual shows to serve Netflix's multimarket priorities and audience preferences.
This paper examines Maz Jobrani's Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (2007) as a foundational case for how stand-up comedy operationalizes "humornizing"-a collaborative process through which humor invites audiences to reconstitute social boundaries and transform the marginalized "other" into a subject of shared humanity. Building on Ashouri Talooki's (2017) concept of humornizing adapted here to live performance, the study develops an analytic model rooted in performance studies (Harbidge 2012; Rayner 2012), while engaging Krefting's (2014) critique of minority comedy's ethical risks and Gillota's (2013) work on ethnic humor's ambivalence. The analysis demonstrates how Jobrani's routines-through strategic pronoun shifts, embodied accents, and reflexive meta-commentary-leverage both affiliative humor and critical distance to challenge dehumanizing narratives while negotiating risks of stereotype reinforcement. Rather than treating humor as purely cognitive or affective, the paper foregrounds the co-creative dynamics between performer and audience, revealing how shared laughter produces provisional communities wherein empathy flourishes. By tracing how neurobiological bonding, discursive sophistication, and embodied performance intersect, the study illustrates humornizing as a multilayered practice capable of fostering moments of vulnerability, provocation, and intercultural solidarity that rehearse pluralistic citizenship.
The 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest vividly portrays the tragic consequences of repressive psychiatric authority. The film was-and remains-one of the most memorable and well-known products of anti-psychiatry sentiment. Opponents of American psychiatry from the time period of Cuckoo's Nest objected to what they saw as social control rather than the profession's efforts to help people. But viewed in the historical context of psychiatry, the representation in the film ironically undermined the work of some members of the profession who were trying to reform society to address inequities, including social causes and consequences of mental illness. Social psychiatrists, a loose group within the field from the late 1940s through the late 1970s, conducted research and promoted policies to combat poverty and racism. Within psychiatry, critics of social psychiatrists' expansive vision used anti-psychiatry activism to justify narrowing the focus of the profession toward individual diagnoses and medications.
Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play within a play, The Skin of Our Teeth, is a strangely structured and offbeat tale spanning several eras and multiple genres while breaking the standard conventions of "well-made" drama. This article will deconstruct Wilder's ambitious work, in an educational context, from the perspective of a playwright and the perspective of a director applying the critical lens of reception theory to develop an argument for why it is precisely plays of this kind-the plays that revel in their strangeness-that reaffirm theater's capacity for unique storytelling.
Scholars have often brushed over the topic of apocalyptic and Millennialist ideology after 1660. This research finds that apocalyptic convictions played a primary role in fomenting revolutionary political action in colonial Maryland during the mid-late 17th century. A politico-historical and theological analysis of colonial documents and contemporary English apocalyptic publications reveals clear emulation of Isaian restoration language—suggesting that Maryland revolutionaries understood their actions within the larger Millennial narrative. The findings in this study open the door for further consideration of the effect of imperial power structures on regionalized apocalyptic narratives in the 17th century and beyond.
Immigrant representation in American sitcoms has evolved drastically from the 1950s to 2025, portraying immigration experiences in response to cultural and political ideology. By analyzing these changes through the lens of historical television texts, United States legislation, and Stuart Hall's representation theory, it is possible to see how these differences are a result of the decades in which they were produced. Beginning with early shows featuring immigrants focused on assimilation narratives, representation can be traced through sparse portrayals in the 1960s-1970s, exaggerated stereotypes in the 1980s, lack of representation during post-9/11 suspicion, and finally to more authentic contemporary portrayals. Superstore episode "Employee Appreciation Day," which directly addresses immigration enforcement, is an example clearly showing how contemporary thought influences media texts. Examination of sitcoms' encoded messages about immigrant identities shows that television's unique capacity to either humanize or dehumanize immigrant individuals or groups can potentially create empathy and understanding or promote cultural bias.
